On December 4,
1860, the U.S. House of Representatives created a special
Committee of Thirty-Three, with one member from each state, in
order to craft a compromise to prevent the secession of Southern
slave states from the Union. Congressman Charles Francis Adams
of Massachusetts introduced to the committee a version of a
constitutional amendment first (unsuccessfully) proposed by
Senator William Henry Seward of New York in the Senate’s
Committee of Thirteen. It would have prohibited future
constitutional amendments from interfering with slavery where it
already existed (i.e., in the South).

The proposal was voted favorably by the
Committee of Thirty-Three and was reported to
the full House on January 21, 1861, by committee chairman Thomas
Corwin, an Ohio Republican. Subsequently, the measure became
known as the Corwin Amendment. It passed the House on February
28 by a vote of 133-65, and the Senate approved it on March 2 by
a vote of 24-12.

In the March 16, 1861 issue of Harper’s
Weekly (published March 6), a feature article
entitled “Two Nights in the Senate” gave Senator Stephen Douglas
of Illinois credit for securing passing of the Corwin Amendment
in that chamber. The narrative included character sketches of
several senators. Douglas had been the presidential nominee of
the Northern wing of the Democratic Party in 1860. During the
secession crisis, he worked for a compromise, and he
wholeheartedly supported the Union when the Civil War began in
April 1861. However, he died less than two months later on June
3.

In “Two Nights in the Senate” (column two)
“Lindley Murray” refers to an author of books on English grammar
and spelling, which were used widely in American schools during
the nineteenth century. In column three, “de gustibus,
etc.” is probably short for the Latin phrase, de gustibus non
est disputandum, which can be translated as, “There is no
accounting for taste.”

In an unusual move, Democratic President
James Buchanan signed the Corwin Amendment on March 3, 1861, his
last day in office (the Constitution does not require
presidential approval for proposed amendments). It was ratified
by only two states—Ohio on May 13, 1861, and by Maryland on
January 10, 1862—and therefore fell far short of the necessary
three-quarters majority of states in order to become part of the
U.S. Constitution. Had it achieved ratification, the Corwin
Amendment, which protected slavery, would have become the
Thirteenth Amendment.